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9. IX
She left me, after she had been introduced, in no suspense about her present motive; she was on the contrary in a visible fever to enlighten me; but I promptly learned that for the alarm with which she pitiably panted our young man was not accountable. She had but one thought in the world, and that thought was for Lord Iffield. I had the strangest saddest scene with her, and if it did me no other good it at least made me at last completely understand why insidiously, from the first, she had struck me as a creature of tragedy. In showing me the whole of her folly it lifted the curtain of her misery. I don't know how much she meant to tell me when she came--I think she had had plans of elaborate misrepresentation; at any rate she found it at the end of ten minutes the simplest way to break down and sob, to be wretched and true. When she had once begun to let herself go the movement took her off her feet; the relief of it was like the cessation of a cramp. She shared in a word her long secret, she shifted her sharp pain. She brought, I confess,
"Oh you dear thing," she exclaimed, "I'm delighted to see you: you spare me another compromising demarche! But for this I should have called on you also. Know the worst at once: if you see me here it's at least deliberate--it's planned, plotted, shameless. I came up on purpose to see him, upon my word I'm in love with him. Why, if you valued my peace of mind, did you let him the other day at Folkestone dawn
"About Flora Saunt?"
"About what he says and does: he must be as still as a mouse! She's at last really engaged."
"But it's a tremendous secret?" I was moved to mirth.
"Precisely: she wired me this noon, and spent another shilling to tell me that not a creature in the world is yet to know it."
"She had better have spent it to tell you that she had just passed an hour with the creature you see before you."
"She has just passed an hour with every one in the place!" Mrs. Meldrum cried. "They've vital reasons, she says, for it's not coming out for a month. Then it will be formally announced, but meanwhile her rejoicing is wild. I daresay Mr. Dawling already knows and, as it's nearly seven o'clock, may have jumped off London Bridge. But an effect of the talk I had with him the other day was to make me, on receipt of my telegram,
Mrs. Meldrum, I perceived, had come to Welbeck Street on an errand identical with my own--a circumstance indicating her rare sagacity, inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very different thing from what Flora's wonderful visit had made of mine. I remarked to her that what I had seen in the shop was sufficiently striking, but that I had seen a great deal more that morning in my studio. "In short," I said, "I've seen everything."
She was mystified. "Everything?"
"The poor creature is under the darkest of clouds. Oh she came to triumph, but she remained to talk something in the nature of sense! She put herself completely in my hands--she does me the honour to intimate that of all her friends I'm the most disinterested. After she had announced to me that Lord Iffield was utterly committed to her and that for the present I was absolutely the only person in the secret, she arrived at her real business. She had had a suspicion of me ever since that day at Folkestone
"But from what cause? I, who by God's mercy have kept mine, know everything that can be known about eyes," said Mrs. Meldrum.
"She might have kept hers if she had profited by God's mercy, if she had done in time, done years ago, what was imperatively ordered her; if she hadn't in fine been cursed with the loveliness that was to make her behaviour a thing of fable. She may still keep her sight, or what remains of it, if she'll sacrifice--and after all so little--that purely superficial charm. She must do as you've done; she must wear, dear lady, what you wear!"
What my companion wore glittered for the moment like a melon-frame in August. "Heaven forgive her--now I understand!" She flushed for dismay.
But I wasn't afraid of the effect on her good nature of her thus seeing, through her great goggles, why it had always been that Flora held her at such a distance. "I can't tell you," I said, "from what special affection, what state of the eye, her danger proceeds: that's the one thing she succeeded this morning in keeping from me. She knows it herself perfectly; she has had the best advice in Europe. 'It's a thing that's awful,
Mrs. Meldrum had held her breath; she gave out a long moan. "Well, that's exactly what I came here to tell him."
"Then here he is." Our host, all unprepared, his latchkey still in his hand, had just pushed open the door and, startled at finding us, turned a frightened look from one to the other, wondering what disaster we were there to announce or avert.
Mrs. Meldrum was on the spot all gaiety. "I've come to return your sweet visit. Ah," she laughed, "I mean to keep up the acquaintance!"
"Do--do," he murmured mechanically and absently, continuing to look at us. Then he broke out: "He's going to marry her."
I was surprised. "You already know?"
He produced an evening paper, which he tossed down on the table. "It's in that."
"Published--already?" I was still more surprised.
"Oh Flora can't keep a secret!"--Mrs. Meldrum made it light. She went up to poor Dawling and laid a motherly hand upon him.
"It's all right--it's just as it ought to be: don't think about her ever any more." Then as he met this adjuration with a stare from which thought, and of the most defiant and dismal, fairly protruded, the excellent woman put up her funny face and tenderly kissed him on the cheek.
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